


Hit Points are the Life of the Party

by CheckersXIV



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cussing, D&D AU, EVERYONE IS FRIENDS OKAY - Freeform, Gen, Implied Relationships, Memes, No beta we die like illiterates, One Shot, Teens being... teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 09:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18427403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheckersXIV/pseuds/CheckersXIV
Summary: Why do stereotypical high school stuff when you can play D&D with your friends? In which Roxas has a Fruit Snack Problem, there are too many old memes, Xion has a bae, and Vanitas works as a pizza delivery boy._A KH D&D one-shot.





	Hit Points are the Life of the Party

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Mac! Here’s a little something from me to you. I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing it.   
> _  
> D&D is a lot of fun and I’m having withdrawals. I made myself hungry writing this. Also, you can’t start and finish a campaign in one sitting, but this is fanfiction so who cares!

Naminé takes a moment to breathe in through her nose to calm her nerves. She’s invested a lot of spare time into this specific creative project. She hopes this goes well. She hopes they don’t break her game. _Again._ She’s taken precautions this time. A lot of them. She knows she’s ready, come what may.

Maybe.

Sora is a fucking force to be reckoned with. 

Her expression eerily calm, she’s been told she has an excellent ‘resting bitch’ face, as she slowly looks at the group of teenagers gathered around her family’s dining room grand table. It’s a twelve seater, two chairs wide and 8 seats long, made out of cherry wood; but, that really doesn’t matter to its occupants. There are designated empty seats between the head of the table towards the back on the room; where Naminé has placed her own belongings and the rest of the other chairs. 

Idle chatter fills the room as everyone begins to get settled.

Bags are slung on the back of other chairs or slung on the floor next to seats. There are a couple of bottled teas, sodas, and a single water bottle covered in worn stickers on the table in front of their respective owners. There is a strict ‘No Flavor Blasted’ chip rule that remains in effect, so the only chips on the table are several different flavors of barely seasoned Pringles, courtesy of Riku. Kairi and Naminé’s fresh-baked sugar cookies and lemon bars are sitting on two small platters that won’t make it through the first hour. Sora brought fruit gummy snacks that are slowly being consumed by Roxas, who went two-ways on drinks with Xion. Ven makes his way into the room holding a plate of sourdough bread slices and Aqua’s famous spinach dip.

The table cheers with approvals ranging from, ‘God bless you,’ to ‘fucking show off.’

Ven laughs, “This is the only way I'm eating vegetables tonight.”

“Amen!” Sora shouts. There’s a round of laughter and Naminé does a quick headcount.

“Wait,” She looks to Ven. “Where’s Vanitas?”

Someone begins ringing the doorbell obnoxiously. 

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say that’s him.” Roxas manages around a mouth full of gummies. Sora fits-bumps him. Riku looks vaguely disgusted, sitting between the two of them. 

A minute later Naminé is trailing back into the room behind Vanitas; who very clearly just got off of work, still wearing his delivery shirt with visor, and holding 4 boxes of pizzas. 

“Someone take these _fucking_ pizzas out of my hands.”

Kairi’s shoots out of her chair, “I’m always a slut for pizza, gimme!”

It takes a little more time to get settled but hell- pizza is worth it. Naminé grabs a slice of the garlic chicken bacon pizza and a little of everything else. She may or may not covertly grab an entire can of sour cream and onion pringles while everyone is attacking the pizza-

Wait. Riku sees her. She stops. His eyes flickered back down to the can, then up at her.

He winks. 

God bless Riku. She shoves the can into her bag before anyone else sees.

Vanitas comes back into the room, having changed into more casual clothes from his own bag. He takes a seat away from the designated empty one on the left of the table. Xion is in the seat right next to him on his right, with Roxas on her right at a corner. Riku and Sora sit at the opposite head of the table next to each other. Riku is occupied with his pizza as Sora argues about Thin Crust vs.Stuffed Crust pizza with Kairi, who is at the other corner, on Sora’s right, across from Roxas. Ven is seated next to Kairi and petting Naminé’s cat, Chirthy, who has curled up on the closer of the two empty seats next to him.

She begins to see papers make their way onto the table. Xion discreetly sets her midnight galaxy colored dice on the table. Vanitas puts down his crimson ones. Ven looks up and sets down his dice, translucent sea green with gold lettering. 

Naminé smiles. She moves to the isolated seat across the table from Sora and Riku. Her Opal sheen white dice are already out. Roxas sits up from his slouch, pulling out his silver metal dice. Riku nudges Sora as he sets down his own Navy blue dice. Sora and Kairi dig into their bags and grab theirs, a translucent ice blue and shimmery rose color respectively, with gold lettering as well.

The table is quiet. All eyes are on her as she props up two, short, manilla folders that have been tapped together; separating her laptop and notebook from the view of the others. 

“Welcome,” she says. Annnnnd pause for ‘Dramatic Effect.’ Okay. “To your new adventure, Warriors of Light.” 

Naminé pulls out the guide she’s crafted for their homebrew adventure, revealing the name of their new Dungeons and Dragons campaign. _The Departure of Castle Oblivion._ Xion, Sora, and Ven let out an ‘oooh’ sound while everyone else sits there with bated breath.

Naminé sits. “Shall we begin?”

_

“I’m gonna punch it.”

“Sora, you’re the Bard, no.” Riku looks unimpressed.

“I’ll punch it with my words!”

Roxas grins, “Do it, I dare you.”

Sora grabs his D20, “Done.”

Xion smacks Roxas’s shoulder, “No! Sora, don’t start a battle just because a ghost appeared. We might be able to get info out of it.”

Ven looks through his wizard's stats. “Damn, I didn’t grab a communicate the dead spell.”

Kairi looks through her ranger’s, “Sorry I'm a tiefling but no dice. Wait-”

There are several groans around the table. Kairi blanches, “No, no, I didn’t mean to!”

Naminé points to the empty bowl on the table. “Penalty Jar” 

Kairi grumbles and pulls out a dollar. Putting it into the bowl with a muttered, “I hate this fucking family.”

Vanitas nods to her. “The community pizza fund thanks you.”

“Shut it, your repeat barbarian has no useful communication skills either.”

“Hey. We all agreed to reuse our first campaign characters after Naminé gave us the okay. You should know by now, _princess_ , that Flood and I are murder machines that are just here to fuck shit up. The rest of the gameplay is all you daisies.”

Sora rolls his dice, effectively killing the conversation. It’s a Nat. 1.

Naminé puts her head in her hands. “You fall right through the ghost, landing face first in some mud. Several ghost warriors show up. Roll for initiative.”

Xion yells, “Goddamnit, Sora!”

_

Chirithy is eyeing Ven’s food from her new spot on his lap. Ven looks up from spoiling her with scratches. 

“So, let me get this straight. This dead king’s ghost wants us to find his banished-to-another-plane castle, restore it, and rescue his daughter?”

Naminé nods, “Yes, that's right.”

Ven hums, “It feels kinda Zelda-ish.”

Naminé quietly puts a check mark by Ven’s character on her notes. For later purposes.

_

The party decides to take a short rest once they actually manage to get to Castle Oblivion. Which means the real people get to restock on their own food and snacks.The Real HP and MP fuel.

Roxas, Xion, and Vanitas eat some more cold pizza slices while the rest take turns microwaving their own slices because they’re not ‘ _heathens_ ,’ or _‘blasphemous’_ according to Sora. Vanitas insists that he put a dollar into the penalty jar for clearly using words that aren’t in his ‘brain range.’ 

Sora sighs at them, pulling out his wallet. “Y’all inhale ice cream on a daily basis, no wonder you’re always eating cold shit.” 

Xion nods, “Ice cold, like our souls.” The three of them high five without looking at each other.

“Jar!” Sora shouts as he leaves to the kitchen. The three begrudgingly add a dollar each.

“See,” Naminé sits down at Ven’s seat. “Now the no-looking high five? That’s just creepy.”

Ven yells from the Kitchen, “Vanitas is always creepy!”

Vanitas yells back. “Fuck off Ventus!”

Naminé counts her blessings that her parents are gone for the weekend. She glances at Ven’s character sheet, a halfling named Aerosmith. She looks through it, checking level up stats while munching on the last sugar cookie. “Ven, you forgot to add to your total HP.” She picks up his pencil and adjusts the number.

“My Bad!”

Riku walks back in balancing three plates so steaming pizzas. Sora is holding 3 cups of water, Kairi right behind him with the second plate of cookies, these once chocolate chip. 

“Naminé,” Sora starts. “Would you mind checking my stats? I feel like I’m not doing much.” 

Xion glances up from her stat sheets, “It’s because you’re a crappy bard.”

“ _Oy._ ”

Naminé smiles, “Sure thing Sora.”

_

“I don’t like this,” Riku frowns. “I can’t figure what that cloaked Warlock means ‘To forget is to remember,’ that doesn’t make sense.”

Naminé eats a chip. Riku frowns some more.

Vanitas rolls his eyes, “I use the card he gave us.”

Naminé nods, “The door unlocks, what do you do?”

“Twiddle my fingers and suck my thumb.”

Ven rolls his eyes now. “We go inside.”

Naminé looks at the group. “All of you?”

They all nod.

“Okay. It’s blinding white for a moment. And then you all hear something. The tell-tale sounds of folk music, and muffled chatter. As your vision clears you all realize you’re standing in a town square-”

“What the fuck-” Riku smacks Sora’s shoulder to shut him up. “But we’re in a castle!” There’s another smack, this time from Kairi.

“-and there are fairy lights announcing names of shops on buildings. It’s late at night. It’s a quaint looking town made of wood and intricate brickwork. There’s a mailbox at the corner of the square. A giant gate with the number one over it looms over you.”

Roxas frowns, “huh.”

“-And then you all realize that this is all very familiar. In fact, you know where you are.” She pauses, again, for dramatic effect. “Somehow, you’re back in Traverse Town.”

Yelling erupts at the table.

“From the first campaign?!”

“Oh, holy shit-”

“Is why we’re allowed to reuse characters??”

“What the fuck-”

“Wait, what!”

“Naminé, you fucking genius DM.” 

Naminé grins. _Like Zelda my ass_. “Please roll to investigate.” 

_

“-and with that, you have cleared the first floor.”

Roxas stares at Naminé, “I still have no idea what’s going on.”

Naminé laughs, “You shouldn’t yet.”

Sora has his head on the table. “Why did I pick bard, we need a cleric. Screw the College of Swords. I should have made Leon a Cleric.”

Xion looks his way, “Well with my monk and your bard supporting, it’s not all bad.” She sniffs. “Our Paladin and Rogue just need to remember their passives for their defense buffs.”

Riku looks sheepish. “Sorry, I’ll have Highwind focus on defense a bit more.”

Roxas shrugs, “I remember to disengage from the fight. But since Salty is a dual wielder rouge, that no shield thing always bites me in the ass.” He downs another packet of fruit snacks in his mouth like a shot.

Vanitas laughs, “Multiclass to barbarian with me. Be a tank.” Roxas is mid-chew and appears to be giving it serious thought when Naminé draws back in the group's attention.

“So, do you all choose to go forward up a floor or go back?”

Ven looks at the group, “Up, right?”

They all nod.

“Okay, you all reach the second floor. Everyone give a constitution saving roll.” There’s some groans and hissing of pain as dice hit the table.

Naminé looks at the numbers. “Roxas.” 

He looks up scared. “Yeah?”

“Choose three cantrips.”

“Uh, okay.” He does and tells them to the group the spells. 

“Alright. Everyone saved but Roxas, and Roxas, strike those spells from your character sheet-”

“ _what-_ ”

“-you no longer remember how to perform them.”

The party starts yelling again.

_

They have to take a break because Naminé cannot stop laughing at their reactions for a solid five minutes. She keeps glancing at Roxas’ soulless gaze, Riku’s intense _‘I told you so’_ expression, or everyone else’s looks of utter terror- except Vanitas who just went emotionless because he doesn’t do _fear, excuse you-_ and collapses into giggles.

Kairi bites her nails, “So, the whole forget thing is our skills as we go up?”

Naminé nods. “We’ll stick to lower level ones at first. And you get to choose. It the number of spells you lose will correspond to how bad your roll is.”

Ven is furiously petting Chirthy. “Okay, okay, okay, cool. This is cool. This is fine.”

Xion looks at Naminé, “So what’s the remember part?”

“It’s you guys going through the past again. But also something else.”

Riku squints, “Something else?”

“Yes,” Naminé looks at her notes. “Sora?”

He sits ramrod straight. “Yes, ma’am!”

“You rolled an 18. So once we get to the second floor, something happens to Leon. You remember something. It’s the first time the party meets each other in the real Traverse Town Tavern to accept the first quest that made the seven of you heroes- except, you remember someone else. You remember that there was eight of you accepting that quest.”

The table is silent.

Sora blinks, “I share this to the party.”

“Okay, what're your reactions?”

Xion looks down at her notes, “Shelly insists there was always seven of us.”

Kairi nods, “Destiny does too. She checks Leon for a fever.”

Naminé interjects, “Leon’s temperature is normal. He seems perfectly healthy.”

Roxas and Ven share a look, “Can we do a check?”

“You can. For what?” 

Dice roll on the table.

Roxas nods, “15+2, so 17 on perception.”

Ven sighs, “9 total for wisdom.”

Naminé jots it down. “Okay, well. Neither of you detects anything wrong with Leon. Expect Leon is now saying that you’re missing a person in your party. What do you do?”

Riku runs his hand through his hair. “I guess we keep moving forward.”

_

“There are _two_ cloaked warlocks?” Kairi looks tired.

“Yup.”

Sora picks up his dice, “I roll to seduce him.”

The table groans.

It’s a Nat. 20.

The table yells.

Naminé exhales through her nose. “Okay. What do you do?”

Sora grins, “I saunter up to him-” Riku puts his face in his hands- “swaying my hips-” Kairi snorts- “and say, ‘hey, _Big Boy_ -”

Roxas screams. 

Sora throws a chip at him, “God, shut up! And ask them to lower their hood so I can get a better look at their handsome face.”

“It lowers its hood. It’s faceless.”

_“What the fuck-”_

_

Naminé finishes her description of the next revisit location on the third floor of the castle. She is met with a chorus of pained groans. It’s music to her ears.

Kairi sighs, “Do we really have to be back in Agrabah?”

Riku slumps back in his chair, “I hate Agrabah.”

Ven clears his throat. “I hate sand.” His voice is several octaves lower. “It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." 

“Dude,” Roxas picks at one of the many empty wrappers in front of him. “Dollar in the Jar. You said that line last campaign.”

“It’s still relevant.”

_“Is it?”_

Vanitas groans, “Can we get back to the game or what?”

_

A dice hits the table.

Xion grins, “That’s 17+3. Attack is 5+6 so 11”

Naminé smiles, “That hits. What does this look like?”

“Shelly slams her quarterstaff butt first into his neck.” Sora blanches.

Naminé nods, “Okay, this takes out the cloaked warlock-” Xion fist pumps- “-hey, let me paint my word picture. You all hear a crack the second Shelly’s weapon collides with the Warlock’s neck. It sounds like something is shattered. It’s hood flies back to reveal a wooden, faceless, mannequin. And sure enough, the ‘warlock’s’ head falls onto the ground with a thud as the body collapses in on itself.”

Kairi raises her hand, “Question! So, then we didn’t kill the evil warlock making us forget skills?”

“No.”

“Balls. What did we kill?”

“Roll for me.” 

Kairi whines, and reaches for her dice. It’s a 10. 

“You have no idea.”

_“Balls.”_

_

Vanitas is chugging his Redbull while Ven cracks open a new one. 

Xion opens her first one. “Ah, cracking a cold one with the boys.” The three of them do a drink-clink over the table.

Roxas feigns a hurt look, “Am I not one of your boys?”

Xion puts a hand on his shoulder, “Oh Roxas, You're fam.”

Roxas whispers, “ _holy shit_.” 

“Wait,” Sora asks as he loses another thumb war with Riku. “Then who’s bae?” They keep holding hands. 

Naminé feels flush as all eyes turn to her. Xion winks. Naminé smiles back, a little redder now.

“Oh, yeah. Girlfriend status huh?”

Vanitas groans, “Can we get back to the dungeons? And the Dragons? Preferably before I die?”

Kairi nods, “Yes, god, I need to know what the hell is the deal with the warlock dummies-”, Naminé frowns, “replicas-” , “-sure, and that other party member only Leon seems to remember.”

Naminé looks back at her notes. “Okay, so the rest of you have all finished checking around on this floor right?” They all nod at her. “Cool, do you want to keep moving forward?” Another group nod. “Okay, give me those constitution numbers.”

Several dice roll on the table. 

Naminé blinks, “Damn, you’re all gonna burn out your good luck.” There isn’t a number below 17 (with modifiers, but that’s just details.)

There’s some cheers and high fives.

“Okay, so, no one loses any skills this time. But now, all of you remember something. You all remember this 8th party member very clearly with you alongside your initial quest. You remember a human with a kind smile, sitting among your campfires during your long journey. She had long orange hair in two low pigtails. None of you can remember her name. But you all know, with stunning clarity, that she was a friend, and she was your cleric.”

Sora slams a hand on the table. “We have to find her.”

Discussions break out at the table, as people try to figure out if the girl was actually friend or foe. Over how many floors there were in the castle. If they would ever reach the top. What the fucking warlock’s damage was. If the girl was actually the warlock, or if she was a princess, or maybe she was the cleric who was also a princess. Also if this campaign was all a dream or not- that one earned Sora a shoulder smack.

Naminé reaches for a Rockstar with a smile and the thought that this was gonna be a long night.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, Sora and the Party manage to save Strelitzia, the cleric and restore the castle. She wasn’t in their party, this is based on Chain of Memories after all, but later joins after the quest. She’s Namine’s character to sub in for those times someone can’t make it to a session to play. There were some Bad Times during the new campaign too. Ven’s character, Aerosmith, lost an arm. Namine never forgot that Zelda comment Ven, so of course she remembered when you rolled a 1 during a Save throw. Roxas and Riku tied second for forgetting the most skills. In first place was Xion, who just decided to reclass since she ended up losing all her skills. Sora’s bard, Leon (yes, FFVIII) actually rolled best on his ‘memory’ saves, being the luckiest in that respect. 
> 
> You can find me on twitter as Tealeaf @Checkers_XIV.


End file.
